Media Violence

Media Violence

Media violence indicates a social phenomenon in which physical and verbal force against self or others is shown on television, the Internet and newspapers. In recent years, increasing violence in the media has brought numerous negative impacts on human behavior, including aggression and developing fear, especially in children. It is claimed that children may learn to protect themselves by watching media heroes. However, there is overwhelming evidence that exposure to media violence leads to many serious problems for children by stimulating aggression through imitation and desensitization.

Increasing violence in the media which results in the development of aggressive and uncontrollable behaviour in children may lead to crime. It is generally thought that young children imitate the actions of their parents and others as a method of learning the world (Beresin, 1999). Furthermore, they instinctively imitate the behaviour they observe, without always possessing the intellect or maturity. Therefore, when children watch violent or sexual movie, they are more vulnerable because children do not always understand the differences between reality and what they view on the screen. Furthermore, the capacities for understanding media violence depend on the age of children (Black and Newman, 1995). It is a fact that by the age of 11 American children watching television for two to four hour each day will have experience approximately 100,000 violent acts and 8,000 television murders.(The Lancet, 1994). Children tend to imitate violent actions observed on television, but they do not differentiate between what they should or should not be imitated. It is believe that children who just view movies are more likely to hit or threaten others. For instance, a child observes an adult who kicks toys then the child will repeat the same the behaviour and destroy the toys (Rowell-Huesmann and Moise, 1996). Thus, children are likely more aggressive after observing violence on television. In addition, violence in the media might cause violent crime (Coyne, 2007). Therefore, if children and adolescences experience too much media violence, including murders or killing other people, they are probably easy to be involved violence. Consequently, children and adolescences tend to commit a crime and become criminals. As a result, imitation of violence in the media could leads to serious concerns in society.

In addition, exposure to media violence could bring about cultivating fearful and pessimistic attitudes in children which, in turn, leads to heath issues and close to the outside world. Recently, advancing technology, including satellite and cable television, interactive computer games and the information superhighway, a wide variety of violent images has been accessible, with less effective censorship (Black and Newman, 1995). Therefore, children and adolescences easily access to media violence, such as horror movies and violent video games so they may witness some of the images frightening and develop anxiety and phobic reactions. As a result, some of the children might experience nightmares and other sleep problems (Black and Newman, 1995). For example, they may probably experience insomnia. Consequently, it is possible that children could suffer with physical and mental illnesses. Moreover, some of the children are extremely scared of violence and crime so they might become increasingly sensitive and pessimistic about the world. Thus, they lose confidence and never go to outside which could lead to diminish their creative capability. As a consequence, violence and crime might become an obsession in children.

Children's desensitization to violence has increased numerously through repetition in media violence lead to reduce inhibited aggression. It is fact that every day on newspapers, magazines and television news, images of death bodies and crime have regularly presented. Due to violence becoming over mediated, there are no more troubles for everyone observing a death human body on the media. As a result, it has a significant effect on children because many of them become less aware about violence. In addition, children viewing violent movies are likely to become more suspicious and tend to expect others to act violently (Rowell-Huesmann